Snap packages have been around since late 2015, but it wasn't until 2016 that Canonical added support to its operating system. It did it with the release of Ubuntu 16.04 and since then it has rained a lot. There are already 41 (down from 42 recently) Linux distributions that can use this type of new generation packages and today we can install Snaps from GIMP and Firefox, among others, but today DEB packages are still used much more . The question is, for how long? We don't know, but the latest Ubuntu move + Chromium it could mean something.
And it is that Ubuntu will soon offer the Chromium browser as snap package instead of in DEB as before. It will be available on all supported systems, which right now are October's Eoan Ermine, the recently released Disco Dingo, the now less new Ubuntu 18.04, and the "old rocker" Ubuntu 16.04. The first thing they have done has been to update the Chromium Snap for Ubuntu 19.10 so that the stable version is installed, both when updating and when performing a new installation. In the next step, once everything has been thoroughly checked, it will be delivered to the supported versions, starting with Disco Dingo and continuing with the LTS versions.
Chromium's Snap Pack Coming to All Still Supported Versions
After the transition is complete, Chromium will no longer be available as a DEB package. The idea is to save engineering, build, and maintenance time by eliminating the need to build each version for all Ubuntu releases.
Now, what can we expect from all this? First of all, some problems. Although most Snap packs work perfectly, they perform less well than regular DEBs. We will also find ourselves with worse integration in terms of the image, that is, Chromium will have a UI (with few changes) for all operating systems, which is not the best option if the graphical environment we use is a little "peculiar ».
The good thing is that there always has to be a brave person who takes the first steps so that everyone will follow him, and that brave person has already made himself known. In the future, users of the Open Source version of Chrome we will be able to enjoy all the advantages of the Snap packages and, if everything works as expected, we can think that soon after they will start doing the same with the rest of the packages, so in my opinion, this transition will be the first of many. What do you think of this movement?
Chromium is already currently as a snap, in the snap store it goes out.
Now it's time to modernize a bit 🙂
Uninstalling chromium and all snap packages.
Snap mounts a virtual partition for each application that is installed, which explains its unacceptable slowness and consumption of resources.
They already screwed up with Unity, with MIR, but Canonical still hasn't learned the lesson: with free software, "swallow it" doesn't work.